The Chemawa American, November 20, 1929, Image 1

CHEMAWAfAMERIC AN
Printed at Che maw a, Oregon, and Devoted to the Interests of Indian Education
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Vol. XXXI
Wednesday, Nov. 20, 1929
No. 11
“RED HEROINES OF THE NORTHWEST”
B orrowed
from the
Q uiver of
the
“O ptimeter ”
The best way to break a bad habit is to drop it.
vaan
- -
>
People who are afraid of missing something, seldom
make a hit.
Many a slow thinker gets a reputation for being
“conservative.”
When you have a fight with your conscience and
get licked, you win.
The worst thing that can happen to a man in this life
is to get its best things too easily.
What you are likely to get is determined by what
you are willing to give for what you want.
—
)
If you have no trouble in living up to your ideals,
it indicates that you need a set of new ones.
Probably the reason some folks don’t mind their own
business is that they simply must have something to do.
The most humiliating punishment you can inflict on
one who has done you a wrong, is to do him a favor
in return.
About the most useless thing in the world is a good
idea that has never been made to get out and hustle
for a living.
There is just as much pleasure and satisfaction in
goodness as there is in wickedness, but the latter is
more widely advertised.
The worst thing about failure is that it merely con­
vinces some people that they could make a whale of a
success at something else.
“Red Heroines of the Northwest” is the title of a
new book by Byron Defenbach, Idaho’s state treasurer.
Mr. Defenbach is an old Indian Service employee
whose name is familiar to a number of employees still
in the service. At one time he was Chief Clerk at
the Genoa Indian School, and later Superintendent of
the Fort Peck boarding school. For sometime he was
side-kicker with Fred C. Campbell and Calvin Asbury
and other old-timers who will rejoice at the political
and literary success of their old friend and co-worker.
The three red heroines are Sacajawea, the daughter
of a Shoshone chief, who accompanied Lewis and
Clark; the Dorion woman, who was a member of the
Wilson Price Hunt expedition along the course of Snake
river and in whose life the most tragic and noble event
occurred in the Boise valley; Jane Silcott, the Nez Perce
girl who guided the Pierce party to the spot where
gold was first discovered in Idaho
Sacajawea and the Dorion woman were born in the
year 1786 and Jane in 1842. So far as is known, the
women never saw one another, although their journeys
led all three into Idaho. The one thing which they
all had in common was their service to the white man
in undertakings which affected materially the develop­
ment of the northwestern states.
Sacajawea’s service to the Lewis and Clark party
was a service of love. She won the friendship and
admiration of every man in the party by her cheerful
endurance of the severe hardships of the trail. A piti­
ful note is sounded in descriptions of the devotion of
the girl to the red-headed Captain Clark, whom she
held in God-like awe.
The Dorion woman was stolid, unemotional, devoted
to her children, brave in the face of apparently insur­
mountable difficulties and grave danger. She made
her way on foot with her two small children from the
Boise valley to the Walla Walla country in the dead of
winter, alone and snowblind, after her husband and
other men of the party had been massacred by hostile
Indians. There is no greater bravery or self-sacrifice
recorded in history than the Dorion woman’s struggle
to save her children.
Jane, in the words of the author, was just a good
woman. Her contribution of service to the white
man’s cause was less than that of her sisters. She
(Continued from page 2)